Book Review: Speak

While enjoying some of my time off in Ohio last week, I did some serious damage at one of my favorite stores: Half Price  Books. Since in a few weeks I will enter a new world of Middle School Language Arts, I have been trying to research some good novels for that age group, if nothing else just for stocking my shelves so kids can have something interesting to read for pleasure if they so choose. One of the books I picked up was Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak.

I am a little unsure why this book has been out for nearly 10 years, complete with a movie starring Kristin Stewart (which I just found out), and I am just now hearing about it, but whatever. It does seem like just in the past few months Speak keeps popping up everywhere I look, so I wanted to find out if it was really as good as I was hearing. I would not jump straight to saying it is a great book when compared to the canon of great literature that is available, but I do think that it is great for what it is: a story about a teen written for teens. The story follows the main character, Melinda, through her entire freshman year of high school. She has entered the 9th grade a selective mute, with all her former friends and fellow classmates hating her for calling the cops  at a party earlier that summer. As the novel progresses, we learn the entire story and are able to watch Melinda grow, change, and embrace herself.

There were two aspects of this book I really loved. The first was the ongoing symbolism of the tree. Just looking at the cover of the book one can tell that the tree will be significant. There’s no deep symbolism going on here really, but I thought that since this is a book directed toward a younger audience it was a nice way to use symbolism in a way that is easy to understand. Melinda is given the task of using a tree as her only subject during the entire year of art class. At first she struggles with this and can’t even draw a tree, but as the year progresses she experiments with creating trees in different mediums, and even lets this project spill over into her newfound love of the outdoors and bringing her family’s yard back to life. Obviously a big, blinking red arrow is telling us that the tree symbolizes Melinda and the personal growth she endures throughout her freshman year until she finally comes into her own and essentially blossoms into the individual she is meant to be.

Which brings me to the second aspect of this book that I loved. In thinking about possibly having some 13 year-old girls in my classroom next year that might want a good read, I was pleased to discover how much finding one’s identity is a major theme of Speak. We all know what a confusing and difficult time the early teenage years can be, which is what Melinda is dealing with throughout the book. She is able to discover herself primarily through art. It was encouraging to me, as an educator, to read a book where a teacher is influential and the main character is able to thrive and eventually find herself through a great class. I would hope that any student of mine reading this would be able to identify at least on some level, because this is my hope and aspiration as a teacher to young teens. In short, I enjoyed reading a book where the main character was so real and dealing with such real human situations and emotions that I was left confident that it would provide any teenage girl with a sense of comfort at not being alone at this period in life.

Is Speak a wonderful work of literature? I’m going to have to go with no, but it is a book I will be quite content to place on my classroom shelf in hopes of a young mind enjoying it and thereby enjoying reading.